Eating a healthy diet and having an
active lifestyle are critical for maintaining good health. The CDC and
other experts in human nutrition report that fruits and vegetables are
an important part of a well-balanced diet and may reduce or protect you
from the risks of some health issues. Fruits and vegetables provide
vitamins, minerals, fiber, and other nutrients essential for a healthy
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Based on a 2,000 calorie diet, the USDA
Food Guide recommends that you eat about 9 servings of fruits and
vegetables per day, equivalent to about 3000-3500 ORAC units per day,
as part of a balanced diet—and to significantly impact the antioxidant
capacity in the plasma and tissues. Although there is no recognizing
nutritional index available for food labeling for “total antioxidant,”
this amount is recommended by the USDA. The USDA reports that the
average American dietary intake of antioxidants is about 1670 ORAC
units per day. Please CONTACT USfor information about a product that contains almost triple that
amount
based on independent laboratories verification.

Can Foods Forestall Aging?

To determine the motor function of middle-aged test rats, behavioral
psychologist Barbara Shukitt-Hale and technician George Mouzakis
monitor the performance of these 15-month-olds walking a rotating rod.

Studies at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on
Aging at Tufts University in Boston suggest that consuming fruits and
vegetables with a high-ORAC value may help slow the aging process in
both body and brain. ORAC--short for
Oxygen Radical Absorbance
Capacity--measures the ability of foods, blood plasma, and just about
any substance to subdue oxygen free radicals in the test tube.

Early evidence indicates that this antioxidant activity translates
to animals, protecting cells and their components from oxidative
damage. Getting plenty of the foods with a high-ORAC activity, such as
spinach, strawberries, and blueberries, has so far:

raised the antioxidant power of human blood,

prevented some loss of long-term memory and learning ability in
middle-aged rats,

maintained the ability of brain cells in middle-aged rats to
respond to a chemical stimulus, and

protected rats' tiny blood vessels—capillaries—against oxygen
damage.

These results have prompted Ronald L. Prior to suggest that "the
ORAC measure may help define the dietary conditions needed to prevent
tissue damage."

Prior is coordinating this research with Guohua (Howard) Cao, James
Joseph, and Barbara Shukitt-Hale at the Boston center.

Science has long held that damage by oxygen free radicals is behind
many of the maladies that come with aging, including cardiovascular
disease and cancer. There's firm evidence that a high intake of fruits
and vegetables reduces risk of cancer and that a low intake raises
risk. And recent evidence suggests that diminished brain function
associated with aging and disorders such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's
diseases may be due to increased vulnerability to free radicals, says
Joseph, a neuroscientist.

Such evidence has spurred skyrocketing sales of antioxidant vitamin
supplements in recent years.

But several large trials testing individual antioxidant vitamins
have had mixed results. "It may be that combinations of nutrients found
in foods have greater protective effects than each nutrient taken
alone," says Cao, a chemist and medical doctor.

Neuroscientist Jim Joseph and behavioral psychologist Barbara
Shukitt-Hale estimate the memory capacity of test rats required to swim
to a submerged platform in a pool. Software quantifies their
performance by tracking swimming patterns.

For example, foods contain more than 4,000 flavonoids. These
constitute a major class of dietary antioxidants and appear to be
responsible for a large part of the protective power of fruits and
vegetables, Cao says.

By the year 2050, nearly one-third of the U.S. population is
expected to be over age 65. If further research supports these early
findings, millions of aging people may be able to guard against
diseases or dementia simply by adding high-ORAC foods to their diets.
This could save much suffering, as well as reduce the staggering cost
of treating and caring for the elderly.

Cao developed the ORAC test while he was a visiting scientist at the
National Institute on Aging in Baltimore, Maryland. After joining
Prior's group 5 years ago, the researchers assayed commonly eaten
fruits, vegetables, and fruit juices with ORAC. [See Agricultural
Research, November 1996, pp.
4-8.]

"The ORAC value covers all the antioxidants in foods," says Cao.
"You cannot easily measure each antioxidant separately," he adds. "But
you can use the ORAC assay to identify which phytonutrients are the
important antioxidants."

The researchers have been testing whether antioxidants other than
vitamins are absorbed into the blood and protect the cells. And the
results look promising.

Its in the Blood

Several laboratories have reported that people can absorb individual
flavonoids thought to have protective powers. Prior and Cao now have
good evidence that food antioxidants not only are absorbed, they boost
the antioxidant power of the blood.

In an earlier study at the Boston center, 36 men and women ranging
in age from 20 to 80 had doubled their fruit and vegetable intake.
According to the participants' responses on a food frequency
questionnaire, they averaged about five servings of fruits and
vegetables daily during the year before the study. That intake was
doubled to 10 servings of fruits and vegetables daily during the study.

To estimate ORAC intakes for the participants, the two researchers
matched the questionnaire and the diet data with their own antioxidant
values for each fruit and vegetable. Before the study, says Prior, the
participants averaged 1,670 ORAC units daily. Increasing their fruit
and vegetable intake to 10 a day raised the ORAC intake to between
3,300 and 3,500 ORAC units—or about twice the previous antioxidant
capacity.

Based on the participants' blood samples, the antioxidants were
absorbed. The ORAC value of blood plasma increased between 13 and 15
percent on the experimental diet. This supports results of a
preliminary study in which Prior and Cao saw a 10- to 25-percent rise
in serum ORAC after eight women ate test meals containing high-ORAC
foods, red wine, or vitamin C. They tested red wine because it has a
high ORAC value—higher than white wine—and has been associated with a
lower risk of cardiovascular disease.

Ten ounces of fresh spinach produced the biggest rise in the women's
blood antioxidant scores—even greater than was caused by 1,250
milligrams of vitamin C. An 8-ounce serving of strawberries was less
effective than vitamin C but a little more effective than 9.6 ounces of
red wine.

Prior says the increase in plasma ORAC can't be fully explained by
increases in plasma levels of vitamin C, vitamin E, or carotenoids, so
the body must be absorbing other components in these fruits and
vegetables. The antioxidant capacity of the blood seems to be tightly
regulated, he says. Still, "a significant increase of 15 to 20 percent
is possible by increasing consumption of fruits and vegetables,
particularly those high in antioxidant capacity."

The ORAC values of fruits and vegetables cover such a broad range,
he adds, "you can pick seven with low values and get only about 1,300
ORAC units. Or, you can eat seven with high values and reach 6,000 ORAC
units or more. One cup of blueberries alone supplies 3,200 ORAC units."

Fruits with high oxygen radical absorbance capacity are freeze-dried by
technician John McEwen for feeding in experimental fat diets.

Based on the evidence so far, Prior and Cao suggest that daily
intake be increased to between 3,000 and 5,000 ORAC units to have a
significant impact on plasma and tissue antioxidant capacity.

Rats High on ORAC

Rat studies are yielding even more support for high-ORAC diets. The
animals live only about 2 1/2 years total, so it's possible to follow
the effects of high-ORAC foods on the aging process.

Joseph and Shukitt-Hale have been testing extracts of strawberry and
spinach, along with vitamin E, in the rodents. And some of their
results wouldn't surprise Popeye. A daily dose of spinach extract
prevented some loss of long-term memory and learning ability normally
experienced by middle-aged rats. And spinach was the most potent in
protecting different types of nerve cells in various parts of the brain
against the effects of aging.

The researchers started 6-month-old rats on four feeding regimens.
Two groups got diets fortified with either strawberry or spinach
extract, one ate the diet containing an extra 500 international units
of vitamin E, while a fourth got the unfortified diet. Shukitt-Hale, a
behavioral psychologist, had already put a group of rats through their
paces to determine when they begin to falter in memory and motor
function. She says the animals start to lose motor function around 12
months and memory at 15 months; the latter is equivalent to a 45- to
50-year-old human.

When the study rats reached 15 months, she had them doing
gymnastics—such as walking on rods and planks and trying to stay
upright on a rotating rod—all tests of motor function. She also had
these excellent swimmers paddle around a deep pool until, using visual
cues, they found a submerged platform on which they could rest. With
this test, she measures changes in long- and short-term memory.

"None of the diets prevented motor loss," says Shukitt-Hale. The
15-month-old rats performed like middle-aged animals whether they got
the extra antioxidants or not. But the spinach-fed rats had
significantly better long-term memory than the animals getting the
control diet or the strawberry-fortified diet. They remembered how to
find the hidden platform better over time, she says, showing they
retained more of their learning ability. The vitamin E-fed rats were
somewhat less protected against memory loss than the spinach group.

"That's significant," she notes. "It's really difficult to effect a
change in behavior."

Where Aging May Reside

Joseph looks for age-related changes in brain cell function,
focusing on an area of the brain that controls both motor and cognitive
function—the neostriatum. As people and animals age, the cells become
sluggish in responding to chemical stimulation, he says. For
15-month-old rats, the striatal cells have lost 40 percent of their
ability to respond to such signals.

To better understand cellular activity within the brain, technician
Derek Fisher views fluorescent images of calcium in cells that are
affected by oxidative stress. The calcium binds to a fluorescent dye
that the imaging system can measure.

Not so in the animals whose diets were fortified with spinach or
strawberry extracts or vitamin E. Their striatal cells performed
significantly better than those of rats on the control diet—especially
the rats getting the spinach extract. That group scored twice as high
as the control animals in Joseph's test.

The spinach group also scored best among the fortified diets in a
test of nerve cells in the cerebellum, a part of the brain that
maintains balance and coordination. The test was done by Paula
Bickford, a collaborating pharmacologist with the University of
Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver.

Why spinach is more effective than strawberries is still a mystery.
The researchers conjecture that it may be due to specific
phytonutrients or a specific combination of them in the greens. While
this research is still in its infancy, says Joseph, "the findings, so
far, suggest that nutritional intervention with fruits and vegetables
may play an important role in preventing the long-term effects of
oxidative stress on brain function."

Prior and Cao also have early evidence that these foods protect
other tissues. Subjecting rats to pure oxygen for 2 days normally
damages cells lining the tiniest blood vessels, or capillaries, causing
them to become leaky.

As a result, fluid accumulates in the rats' pleural cavity—the space
surrounding the lungs. But that was minimized when the animals were fed
blueberry extract for 6 weeks before the oxygen stress. Of all the
fruits and vegetables tested with ORAC, blueberries are one of highest
in antioxidant capacity.

In human terms, says Prior, the animals got the equivalent of 3,000
ORAC units. "If we can show some relationship between ORAC intake and
health outcome in people, I think we may reach a point where the ORAC
value will become a new standard for good antioxidant protection." —By Judy
McBride,
Agricultural Research Service Information Staff.

"Can Foods Forestall Aging?" was
published in the February
1999 issue of Agricultural
Research magazine.

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